Chilling Effect (5 page)

“Let me assure you, there’s nothing quite so exciting as an epi-

sode of CSI happening here, ma’am. Th is is a small, if sprawling,

community. We’re just a big extended family. Th is kind of violence is rare. And I’m sure there’s an explanation.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out two card stock tickets. “Now, we thank you for your

good citizenship. And on behalf of the police force, we’d like to

invite you to head up to the casino for dinner—our treat. Th e steak house is one of the best in the state.”

30

CHILLING EFFECT

He extended the tickets. She hesitated. Was the chief of police

trying to buy her off with a steak dinner? Or was this just typical resort-style public relations? After all, it wouldn’t do for a tourist’s only exposure to the reservation to be stumbling on a murder scene.

Beside her, Joe shrugged. She knew he was thinking that they’d

missed their reservation and they had to eat somewhere. As if to

punctuate the point, his stomach growled loudly.

“Okay, I guess. Um, thank you.” She plucked the tickets from

the police chief’s hand.

Joe watched his wife devour her petit fi let as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.

“Maybe you should have gone for the New York strip,” he observed.

She paused and swallowed then reached for her water glass before

answering. “Don’t judge.”

He smiled and sipped his wine.

“I’m not. I’m just kind of surprised you have an appetite—much

less one for rare meat—after what happened today.”

She rested her fork and knife on the plate and leaned forward,

resting her arms on the black linen tablecloth.

“I know, right? I think I burned a lot of nervous energy or some-

thing. I’m famished. But every time I think of that poor man . . .”

She trailed off . Her dark eyes threatened to turn liquid.

Crap. He wasn’t trying to make her cry.

“Hey, hey. Don’t think about that. You need to eat. I was just

teasing you.” He kept his tone light and looked around the bustling restaurant.

Between the clank of glasses, the chatter of diners, and the

din of ringing machines, shouts of despair, and whoops of joy that

31

MELISSA F. MILLER

drifted up from the casino fl oor below, no one was paying the slight-est bit of attention to them or their conversation.

“Yeah,” she agreed. But the fork and knife stayed on the plate.

She was quiet for a moment, then she gave him a searching look.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that none of Palmer’s neighbors came

by or even popped a head out to see what all the commotion was?”

Yes, he did.
But there was no way he was going to admit that and wind her up. He knew her too well. Th e last thing he wanted

to do was increase her interest in the murder. Th ey needed to eat

their steak, tip their waitress, and get off the freaking reservation before she got sucked into the case. Th is was their vacation, not an opportunity for her to prove her mettle to that jerk Slater.

She was staring into his eyes, expectantly waiting for an answer.

He scratched the side of his neck and jammed a large forkful of

potatoes into his mouth to buy some time.

“Mmm . . . maybe a little? But Chief Johnson’s glad-handing

aside, you don’t know what kind of community this is. Not every

place is as neighborly as Walnut Bottom, Pennsylvania, Roo. When

you were staying in DC, do you think your neighbors would have

stuck their noses into a criminal investigation?”

She twisted her mouth into an aggravated little bow. “Th at’s

not the same thing.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, nobody’s
from
DC. Virtual y everyone’s a trans-plant from somewhere else. But nobody lives on a reservation unless they were born there. Th is place ought to be close-knit. Even if Isaac Palmer’s neighbors hated his guts and are having a party right now, they should have been snooping around the scene to see what was

going on. Th at’s just the way it works.”

He bit down on his lower lip to keep from reminding her that

she wasn’t exactly the expert on Native American reservations she

was pretending to be. For one thing, her tribe didn’t even
have
hav
an

32

CHILLING EFFECT

offi cially recognized reservation back home—just a sad little cluster of falling-down shacks. For another, she’d left that life behind when she was just a kid. She’d grown up in a white-bread community no diff erent from him. Her adoptive parents probably would

have gone out and off ered the investigating police offi cer lemonade if a crime had happened in her neighborhood, but the crime

in question would more likely have been a case of a house being

egged or some kids stealing a case of beer out of a neighbor’s garage than an execution-style murder. But he fi gured saying as much

would hardly be prudent. And prudence and marriage were two

great tastes together.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing. I don’t know anything about this place. And neither

do you. What I do know is there’s chocolate decadence cake on the

menu. Let’s get some dessert and get back to our own hotel, get back to the point of this trip. What do you say?”

She shook her head and smiled. Chocolate cake was her weak-

ness—shoot, it was more like her Kryptonite.

“I’m onto you, Joe Jackman.”

“Is that a promise? Because I’d sure like to have you on me . . .”

He trailed off .

A faint blush crept over her cheeks and she lowered her eyes.

“We’ll see. But cake fi rst.”

He raised his glass to that.

Joe headed to the parking garage to fetch the Jeep while Aroostine

used the ladies’ room. After wending her way through the casino

fl oor and getting turned around multiple times, she fi nally managed to fi nd the cashier’s cage and then found a route to the exit and the valet stand from there.

33

MELISSA F. MILLER

She was sober and had not been gambling; and yet, her brief trav-

els through the casino had left her feeling overstimulated, dazed, and wrung out.
Or it could be the whole fi nding-a-dead-body part. Right.

She tripped out into the foyer and blinked into the obnoxiously

bright fl uorescent light.

“Can I get your car?” the valet asked. His white smile was nearly

as blinding as the lights.

“Oh, no, thanks. We self-parked.”

She spotted a bench near the bushes lining the entryway. She

plopped down and eased her feet out of her dress pumps, fl exed

her toes, and was jamming them back inside when a little voice

squeaked, “What’s the password?”

She started and scanned her immediate surroundings. Saw no

one. She must have been tireder than she realized if she was having auditory hallucinations.

“Password,” the childlike voice demanded again.

It was coming from the fragrant, fl owering bushes behind her.

She leaned over the back of the bench and peered down into the

shrubbery.

A glitter-dusted face stared up at her. Big brown eyes, pinch-

able cheeks, and a tangle of wild dark hair, crowned with a wreath

of fl owers and ribbon completed the picture. Aroostine took in

the fairy wings strapped to the girl’s back and the wand she waved

regally in her right hand.

“Pixie dust?” she ventured.

Th e girl shook her head solemnly. “Sorry.”

“Magic?”

“Nope. You get one more try.”

Aroostine considered her next guess.

“Love?”

Th e fairy girl popped to her feet.

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CHILLING EFFECT

“Close. But it’s moon glow.”

“Of course,” Aroostine said. She tried to keep a straight face,

but the girl was so adorable it was ridiculous.

Th e girl appraised her.

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“No, you haven’t,” Aroostine agreed.

“I know. I know everybody who lives on the reservation. And

the tourists are usually . . . white. Where do you live?”

“I’m from Pennsylvania. It’s pretty far away.”

“I know. It’s near New York, right?” the girl said proudly.

“Yep.”

“You’re Native, though. Like me,” the girl observed.

“Right again. My name’s Aroostine.” She smiled at the girl.

“I’m Lily.” Th e girl stuck out her free hand and Aroostine took

her small palm in her hand and gave it a shake.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lily.”

“Th anks. My name’s a fl ower. My mom’s is a jewel. What does

yours mean?”

“It means sparkling water.”

“Th at’s pretty.”

“So is Lily,” she told the girl. Th en she asked, “What are you

doing in the bushes? Looking for fairy houses?”

Th e girl shook her head. Her eyes were big and serious. “Wait-

ing for my mom. She works inside.”

Aroostine tried to keep her judgment off her face. Maybe child-

care was hard to come by on the reservation, but surely there was

a safer place for the girl to spend her time than crouching in the

bushes outside the casino.

“Do you always wait for her out here?”

Th e girl answered with a quick shake of her head, tossing her hair over her face. “Oh, no. Usually I stay at our place. I do my homework 35

MELISSA F. MILLER

and get ready for bed. Mom works pretty late some nights. Most of

the time we have dinner together and then I see her in the morning.”

Latchkey kid.

Aroostine fl ashed back to a very long time ago, before the Hig-

ginses adopted her. A memory of warming a plate her grandfather

had left for her in the oven while he was at a tribal council meeting.

Eating alone and crawling into bed and listening to the wind blow

outside the window. She blinked away the memory.

“So what are you doing out here, then?” she asked.

“Mom said it isn’t safe to be home alone tonight.”

News of the murder must be making the rounds, if the girl’s

mother thought she was safer hanging around the casino than

tucked in her bed.

Headlights arced over her, and then Joe slowed the maroon Jeep

to a stop near the bench.

“Well, I have to go, Lily. It was nice to meet you.”

“Good-bye, Aroostine. Have fun in Pennsylvania.”

Th e way the girl said “Pennsylvania,” as if it were the most glamorous location imaginable, made Aroostine’s heart squeeze in her chest.

She turned as she slid into the passenger side of the car and said,

“Moon glow.”

She could hear the girl’s excited giggling as she closed the door.

Th ey drove in companionable silence for several minutes, wind-

ing their way down the lushly landscaped hills that separated the

resort from the rest of the reservation. Aroostine couldn’t shake Lily from her mind.

“Pull over, okay?”

Joe gave her a curious look but edged the Jeep to the side of the

road. He put the vehicle in park and turned on his blinkers.

“Too much cake?”

“Nothing like that.”

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CHILLING EFFECT

She unbelted her seat belt and turned to face him full on. She

inhaled deeply then exhaled.

“Uh-oh, you’re gearing yourself up for a big pronouncement.

I can tell.”

She ignored the commentary. “Joe, I don’t want to go back to

our hotel.”

“Okay? What do you have in mind? I’m game for a late night

of carousing if you are.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Well, what then?”

She gnawed on her lower lip and considered what she was about

to say. Was she sure about this?

Palmer and his blank, staring eyes. Th e long-eared rabbit, lying

supine in the fi eld. Th e uninterested police response. Lily’s small face, so somber even with all her fairy fi nery surrounding her in a cloud of glitter.

“I want to stay here and get to the bottom of Isaac Palmer’s

murder. I
have

hav
to, J

e

hav

oe.”

She braced herself for his reaction.

He just sat there, unmoving and staring out into the dark night.

Finally, he turned the key and switched off the engine. He checked for cars and then opened his door.

She got out the passenger side.

He headed around the car, head down, and started toward a

gravel path near the side of the road. She jogged after him.

“Joe? Where are you going?”

He looked over his shoulder and pinned her with a look that

tore at her heart. His face was a study of anguish.

“I need a minute. I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret. Th ings have been so good between us. I’m trying not to screw this up. Please.

Just go back to the car. I want to clear my head,” he nearly pleaded.

37

MELISSA F. MILLER

“Wait, please. I have to tell you this—it’s important. Th is isn’t

about Sid or getting back in good graces at Main Justice. Th is is about me, something I have to do to be at peace with myself.” As she said the words, she was thinking of the little girl with fairy wings hiding in the bushes.

He shot her a look that she couldn’t read but nodded. “I hear you.”

He turned back to the dark path and walked into the woods.

38

Joe clenched and relaxed his fi sts as he trudged along the dark trail.

Clench, relax. Clench, relax.

His thumping heart and the sweat beading at his hairline were

signs either that his body recognized that his nighttime promenade

through a strange fi eld was ill-advised or that his anger at Aroostine was bubbling to the surface despite his eff orts to quell it. Or maybe both.